Decline & Fall - Byzantium 03 (18 page)

The Second Crusade had been a fiasco. Conrad, with the few of his subjects that had survived Dorylaeum, had continued in the company of the French as far as Ephesus, where at Christmas he had fallen gravely ill. Manuel and his wife, on hearing the news, had immediately sailed down from Constantinople, picked him up and brought him safely back to the palace, where the Emperor, who prided himself on his medical skills, had personally nursed him back to health. The King of the Romans had remained in the capital till March
1148,
when Manuel had put ships at his disposal to carry him to Palestine. The French, meanwhile, had had an agonizing passage through Anatolia, where they had suffered heavily at Turkish hands. Although this was entirely the fault of Louis himself, who had ignored the Emperor's warnings to keep to the coast, he persisted in attributing every encounter with the enemy to Byzantine carelessness or treachery or both, and rapidly developed an almost psychopathic resentment against the Greeks. At last in despair he, his household and as much of his cavalry as could be accommodated had taken ship from Attaleia, leavi
ng the rest of the army and the
pilgrims to struggle on as best they might. It had been late in the spring of
1148
before the remnant of the great host that had set out so confidently the previous year dragged itself into Antioch.

And that was only the beginning. The mighty Zengi was dead, but his mantle had passed to his still greater son Nur ed-Din, whose stronghold at Aleppo had now become the focus of Muslim opposition to the Franks. Aleppo should thus have been the Crusaders' first objective, and within days of his arrival in Antioch Louis found himself under considerable pressure from Raymond to mount an immediate attack on the city. He had refused on the grounds that he must first pray at the Holy Sepulchre; whereat Queen Eleanor, whose affection for her husband had not been increased by the dangers and discomforts of the journey - and whose relations with Raymond were already suspected of going somewhat beyond those normally recommended between uncle and niece - had announced her intention of remaining at Antioch and suing for divorce. She and her husband were distant cousins; the question of consanguinity had been conveniently overlooked at the time of their marriage, but if resurrected could still prove troublesome - and Eleanor knew it.

Louis, for all his moroseness, was not without spirit in moments of crisis. He had ignored his wife's protests and dragged her off to Jerusalem; had antagonized Raymond to the point where he refused to play any further part in the Crusade; and had arrived, his tight-lipped queen in tow, in the Holy City in May, soon after Conrad. There they remained until, on
24
June, a meeting of all the Crusaders was held at Acre to decide on a plan of campaign. It did not take long to reach a decision: every man and beast available must be immediately mobilized for a concerted attack on Damascus.

Why Damascus was chosen as the first objective remains a mystery. The only major Arab state to continue hostile to Nur ed-Din, it could -and should - have been an invaluable ally to the Franks. By attacking it, they drove it against its will into the Emir's Muslim confederation - and in doing so made their own destruction sure. They arrived to find the walls of Damascus strong, its defenders determined. On the second day, by yet another of those disastrous decisions that characterized the whole Crusade, they moved their camp to an area along the south-eastern section of the walls, devoid alike of shade or water. The Palestinian barons, already at loggerheads over the future of the city when captured, suddenly lost their nerve and began to urge retreat. There were dark rumours of bribery and treason. Louis and Conrad were shocked and disgusted, but soon they too were made to understand the facts of the situation. To continue the siege would mean not only driving Damascus into the arms of Nur ed-Din but also, given the universal breakdown of morale, the almost certain destruction of their whole army. On
28
July, just five days after the opening of the campaign, they ordered withdrawal.

There is no part of the Syrian desert more shattering to the spirit than that dark-grey, featureless expanse of sand and basalt that lies between Damascus and Tiberias. Retreating across it in the height of the Arabian summer, the remorseless sun and scorching desert wind full in their faces, harried incessantly by mounted Arab archers and leaving a stinking trail of dead men and horses in their wake, the Crusaders must have felt despair heavy upon them. For this, they knew, was the end. Their losses, both in human life and material, had been immense. They had neither the will nor the wherewithal to continue. Worst of all was the shame. Having travelled for the best part of a year, often in conditions of mortal danger; having suffered agonies of thirst, hunger and sickness and the bitterest extremes of heat and cold, their once-glorious army that had purported to enshrine every ideal of the Christian West had given up the whole enterprise after four days' fighting, having regained not one inch of Muslim territory. Here was the ultimate humiliation -which neither they nor their enemies would forget.

Louis was in no hurry to return to France. His wife was now determined on divorce, and he dreaded the difficulties and embarrassments that this would involve. Besides, he wanted to spend Easter in Jerusalem. Conrad, on the other hand, could not leave quickly enough. On
8
September he left Acre with his household on a ship bound for Thessalonica, where the Emperor met him and, for the second time, bore him back to Constantinople. The pair were by now close friends. Despite the recent debacle, Manuel remained fascinated by Western culture and customs, while Conrad for his part had totally succumbed to Manuel's kindness and charm - to say nothing of the unaccustomed luxuries of the imperial palace, which made a refreshing contrast to the draughty halls of his homeland.

That Christmas was marked by a further union of the two imperial houses when Manuel's niece Theodora - the daughter of his late brother Andronicus - was married to Conrad's brother, Duke Henry of Austria.
1

1
A slight gloom may have been cast over the proceedings by the horror felt by many Byzantines at the fate of a Greek princess being delivered into the hands of Frankish barbarians; a poem by Prodromus in honour of the occasion describes poor Theodora as being 'sacrificed to the beast of the West'.

Before the King of the Romans left for Germany in early February, the two rulers had cemented a further alliance against Roger of Sicily and agreed on a joint South Italian campaign later in the year. They had even reached agreement on the fate of Apulia and Calabria after the King's downfall. Both territories were to go to Conrad - who would, however, immediately make them over to Manuel as the belated dowry of his sister Bertha, now the Empress Irene.

This alli
ance was in fact to achieve littl
e: it certainly failed to topple the King of Sicily, and when a few years later Manuel was to find himself briefly master of much of Apulia this was the result more of his own efforts than of any generosity on the part of the Western Empire. It remained, however — for what it was worth — the only positive result of the Second Crusade, which in all other respects had proved a disgrace to Christendom. With the single personal exception of Conrad himself, it had sown dangerous dissension between Frenchman and German, Frank and Byzantine, and even between the newly-arrived Crusaders and their own brethren who had long been resident in Outremer. It had afforded untold encouragement to the forces of Islam, giving them new solidarity and strength; and it had utterly destroyed the military reputation of the West.

Many centuries were to pass before that reputation was restored.

7

Realignments

[1149-58]

The Emperor Manuel often held that it was an easy matter for him to win over the peoples of the East by gifts of money or by force of arms, but that over those of the West he could never count on gaining a similar advantage; for they are formidable in numbers, indomitable in pride, cruel in character, rich in possessions and inspired by an inveterate hatred of the Empire.

Nicetas Choniates, 'Manuel Comnenus', VII, i

Considerate host that he was, Manuel Comnenus showed no sign of impatience while Conrad lingered in Constantinople, nor any desire to speed the parting guest; the moment he had bidden his friend goodbye but, he set off to rejoin his forces at Corfu, where the siege had continued throughout the winter. Recent reports of its progress had not been encouraging. The Sicilian-held citadel rose apparently impregnable from its high crest above the old town, almost out of range of Byzantine projectiles. The Greeks, wrote Nicetas, seemed to be aiming at the very sky itself, while the defenders could release downpours of arrows and hailstorms of rocks on to the besiegers below. (People wondered, he adds disarmingly, how the Sicilians had captured the place so effortlessly the previous year.) By now it seemed clear that the only hope of victory would be to starve out the garrison; but they had had a full year in which to provision themselves, and even then the Byzantine blockade might at any moment be broken by a Sicilian fleet arriving with supplies.

A long siege could impose just as great a strain on the attackers as on those within; and by spring the Greek sailors and their Venetian allies were barely on speaking terms. The climax came when the Venetians occupied a neighbouring islet and set fire to a number of Byzantine merchantmen anchored offshore. By some mischance they also managed to gain possession of the imperial flags
hip, on which they even went so
far as to stage the elaborate charade mentioned in the previous chapter,
1
dressing up an Ethiopian slave in the imperial vestments and staging a mock coronation on the deck, in full view of the Greeks. Whether the Emperor arrived in time to witness this insult we do not know. He certainly heard about it afterwards, and never forgave the Venetians their behaviour; but he needed them too much to protest. Patience, tact and his celebrated charm soon restored tolerably good relations. Meanwhile the siege continued, with himself now in personal command. There would be time enough, later, for revenge.

Within months he was rewarded: in the late summer Corfu fell -probably through treachery, since Nicetas tells us that the garrison commander subsequently entered the imperial service. The Emperor sailed at once to the Dalmatian port of Avlona, whence he proposed to cross the Adriatic to keep his rendezvous with Conrad in Italy; but he was delayed by storms and was still waiting for the weather to improve when reports were brought to him of a major insurrection by the Serbs, to whom the neighbouring Kingdom of Hungary was giving active military assistance. He also heard to his fury that George of Antioch had profited by his absence to take a fleet of forty ships right up the Hellespont and through the Marmara to the very walls of Constantinople. Thence, after an unsuccessful attempt to disembark, the Sicilians had sailed some distance up the Bosphorus, pillaging several rich villas along the Asiatic shore, and before departing had even fired a few impudent arrows into the grounds of the imperial palace.

Here was another unpardonable insult that the Emperor would not forget; but the Serbian uprising was a good deal more serious -particularly if, as seemed more than likely, the King of Sicily were behind it. The Serbs and the Hungarians were certainly hand in glove, and Roger - whose cousin Busilla had married King Coloman - had always maintained close ties of friendship with the Hungarian throne. What Manuel did not know was that, in his determination to sabotage the projected expedition against him, Roger had engineered a similar diplomatic
coup
against the King of the Romans by financing a league of German princes under the leadership of Count Welf of Bavaria, Conrad's still-hopeful rival for the imperial throne. Thus it was that the King of Sicily, facing the most formidable military alliance that could be conceived in the Middle Ages, that of the Eastern and the Western Empires acting - as they rarely acted in the six and a half centuries of their joint

1
Sec p.
88.

history - in complete concert one with the other, had succeeded in the space of a few months in immobilizing both of them. He may have been, in Manuel's eyes, a usurper of imperial lands and an unprincipled adventurer to boot; but he was at least a worthy adversary.

On
29
July
1149,
King Louis VII and Queen Eleanor landed in Calabria on their way from Palestine and rode inland to the little town of Potenza, where Roger of Sicily was waiting to greet them. Louis was not in a good mood; he had rather misguidedly entrusted himself and his household to Sicilian ships - dangerous craft in which to brave Byzantine waters - and somewhere in the Aegean had encountered a Greek squadron (presumably on its way to or from Corfu) which had turned at once to the attack. He himself had managed to escape by running up the French flag, and Eleanor - whose relations with her husband were now such that she was travelling on a separate vessel - was rescued by Sicilian warships just in time; but one of the escorts, containing several members of the royal household and nearly all the baggage, had been captured by the Greeks and borne off to Constantinople. For Louis, who had already persuaded himself that Manuel Comnenus had been solely responsible for the failure of the Crusade, this incident had been the last straw; and he was only too ready to listen to the proposal now made to him by the King of Sicily.

Briefly, it was for a European league against the Byzantine Empire. Roger explained, clearly and convincingly, how in his hatred of the Christian cause Manuel had allied himself with the Turks, whom he had doubtless kept fully informed about the progress of the Crusading army: the locations of its camps, the state of its preparedness, the routes it proposed to follow. With such a viper in its nest, he continued, the Crusade had been doomed before it started. The first priority, therefore, was to eliminate the
basileus
altogether, together with the depraved and schismatic Empire over which he ruled. Then and only then could the allies launch a victorious Third Crusade to wipe out the humiliations of the Second.